Category Archives: BitAngel

A cryptocurrency investor in the US has filed a lawsuit against his cell phone service provider AT&T on the grounds of gross security negligence that lead to his personal loss of USD 24 million in crypto.

The plaintiff, California resident Michael Terpin, filed a 69-page complaint with the US District Court in Los Angeles on Wednesday alleging that AT&T not only violated its statutory duties and Privacy Policy commitments but went so far as to willingly cooperate with the phone hacker. Terpin claimed that he was victim to digital identity theft two times in seven months when his digital assets were taken via his cell phone number.

Suspicious circumstances were cited by Terpin regarding the actions of at least one AT&T employee. He alleged that ”insider cooperation with the hacker” took place after a store employee offered out his phone number without verifying the person’s identity or requesting any of his private information. Terpin’s complaint details that his number was then used to break into his cryptocurrency accounts and compares the incident to a hotel providing a thief with a fake ID the key to a room and the safe to steal from the rightful owner.

The legal complaint seeks from AT&T USD 200 million in punitive damage and USD 24 million in compensatory damages.

The cryptocurrency community has recently placed a significant focus on increased security as imperative for increasing adoption levels and seeing market prices recover from a relatively poor performance this year, although in this instance it appears to be only AT&T at fault.

An Oxford graduate living in Hong Kong has been identified as Britain’s youngest Bitcoin billionaire at the age of only 34, according to the Mail Online.

Ex-student Ben Delo founded crypto company BitMex, a trading platform created by a selection of finance, trading, and web-development experts, in 2014 and has subsequently amassed a fortune of $3.6 billion along with his co-founders.

Delo, who studied maths and computer science at Worcester College, Oxford and graduated in 2005 with a first-class degree, said that he worked 18 hour days to build up his platform renting out spare bedrooms on Airbnb and creating a space in his living room to make extra money.

After a spell in the City of London, he moved to Hong Kong to take a position with JP Morgan prior, to starting up his platform with Samuel Reed, a computer programmer.

Like something from a Howard Hughes biography, Delo certainly hasn’t let things go to his head though, reportedly living a frugal life in Hong Kong with his wife Pan Pan Wong, to the extent that he and his wife use food vouchers to buy food at McDonald’s. His aim is to be a Bill Gates style philanthropist donating most of his wealth to worthy causes.

There are other young entrepreneurs who are rapidly following in Delo’s footsteps who may not be a billionaire just yet but are well on the way.

At only 23 Charlie Shrem owns Evr, one of Manhattans most famous gastropubs, renowned for being one of the first establishments to accept Bitcoin for food and drink in New York. He is also a BitAngel, an investment group created to invest in Bitcoin startups. Shrem made his initial fortune buying thousands of bitcoins at $20 each in 2011 and is thought to be worth $450 million.

At the young age of 24 Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum has a net worth conservatively estimated to be around $450 million, although, in a recent interview with Forbes, Buterin stated that he now owned less than 0.4% of the company.

At the top of the Bitcoin Billionaires club would be the enigmatic creator and developer of Bitcoin who reportedly owns an estimated 1.1 million bitcoins.